You know those headlines that scream out you can earn XXX amount of dollars by simply “pushing a few buttons” or “sending a few emails” or some such? Well, this case study is actually about someone doing almost no work and yet banking close to $5,000 a month.

In fact, she might be up to that amount now. The $4,400 was how much she earned when we spoke, and she mentioned that her income is increasing every single month. Yet she does almost no work whatsoever.

And by the way, OPA stands for Other People’s Artwork.

Here’s how it works:

I’ll call her Sally because, well, when I talk to her she giggles a lot and sounds kind of silly. Sort of like a high school girl, and yet she’s in her mid-twenties.

Sally has several different identities on Etsy and Ebay. Each identity sells a certain type of artwork. One sells paintings of animals, one sells landscapes, one sells abstract art, one sells hearts (I’m not kidding!) and so forth.

She has a real life assistant (we’ll call him Gorgeous George because as Sally tells it, in addition to working for her George also does some modeling and fitness instruction.) George makes all the listings for the artwork, gets the prints made from the originals, fulfills the orders and handles any customer service requests.

What does Sally do? She outsources work to several artists who do all of her paintings for her. Just like hiring a ghostwriter to write a book which you then sell, Sally is hiring “ghost painters”. She has them sign a non-disclosure agreement that gives her all rights to the paintings. And she never tells her artists what she does with the paintings, either.

If I were doing this business model, I might consider giving the artists a percentage of sales, but Sally likes to simply pay one fee up front to keep things simple.

Sally chooses the styles for the paintings by finding examples and showing them to her artists. She then asks them to replicate the style and not the actual painting. She sells the original paintings for a good price ($300 to $1,000) and sells limited edition prints for a lower price.

Her listings never claim that she or her persona is the artist. She’ll use generic language such as, “This painting was created May of 2021 using pastels on canvas.” She has her artists use several mediums, including acrylic, watercolor, pastels, ink, charcoal and so forth.

She also has a virtual assistant who has one job: Promoting the artwork through various social media channels. This is why her business is growing so fast, because word is getting out via social media. And she’s very good at picking her subjects, too, some of which are extremely timely and most of which prove popular.

As you can see she has expenses: Her real life assistant George, her virtual assistant, the artists and selling fees. But even after all this, she pulled in $4,400 in profit the month she revealed her system to me, and like it said, it’s increasing every month.

The real key here is to choose subjects that will sell. That’s why she likes animals, hearts and landscapes because they always do well. And her paintings aren’t super elaborate, either. An experienced painter can likely create one in a short afternoon.

One of her best-selling stores sells paintings that are somewhat cartoonish, including caricatures of real people as well as animals doing silly things. As mentioned earlier, one sells hearts. I suspect this artist probably does 4 or 5 paintings in a day because they are that simple. But they sell like hotcakes because people love hearts and bright colors.

This business is easy to replicate and if you use assistants, it takes very little time at all.

Boys and girls, there was a time when calculators weren’t apps on smartphones – they were actually stand-alone hand-held electronic gizmos that did nothing but calculate numbers. (I’m dating myself…) Some of these calculators were even what you might call “desk sized” because they were so big you had to set them on something to use them.

One day a salesman found himself stuck with a gross of these large desk calculators. Nobody wanted to buy them, so here’s what he did…

He told his customers they were giant “ice scrapers” they could use to scrape ice off of windshields. The customers would object and say, “No, they’re calculators,” and he would reply, “Oh ya, I suppose you could use these as calculators, too, but they’re really great at removing ice!”

People would laugh and then buy one, and within days the calculators sold out.

Do you have a product that’s not selling?

Maybe you can find new positioning for your product, or a new and imaginative way to describe it.

For example, do you have a course on how to drive traffic via social media? Reposition it for one particular niche – dating, health, mmo, chiropractors – you get the idea. Do you sell a course on how to make art? Reposition it as art therapy so that it’s now about the process and not the outcome.

Almost any product can be targeted to a new audience or even rebranded as something entirely different.

Time and again I’ve seen new marketers complain that they’re not earning 5 figures a month. So, I ask them what they’re selling…

$7 reports…

$17 ebooks…

$27 video sets…

“Okay,” I say, “let’s do some math. Five figures a month is $10,000 or more. How many $7 products do you need to sell to make $10,000?”

“I don’t know,” they say.

The answer is 1,428.

What about $17 ebooks?

If you sell 588 of those a month, you’ll make five figures.

Yeah, but what about $27 video sets?

You only need 370 of those a month. That’s 12 or 13 sales every day.

If you convert a whopping 5% of your visitors, you’ll need 360 interested visitors a day to achieve that.

That’s going to cost money to drive that kind of traffic, which means you’ll need to sell a whole lot more products.

You see where this is going.

If the basic structure of your business prevents you from earning the income you want, then you’ve got to change your business.

It’s like buying a car that only goes 50, and then feeling disappointed and mad when it won’t go 100. It’s just not built for that kind of speed, and your business might not be built to earn 5 figures a month, either.

Low priced products are great for building a list of buyers and essential for self-liquidating paid advertising. You pay $100, you make $100 but you’ve got a list you’re building, or rather two lists because one is subscribers (which can be good) and the other one is buyers (which is where the real profit is made.)

But if you want to make five figures a month, you’ll need to either sell something more expensive like a $197 course or a $500 coaching program, or else promote affiliate products.

Let’s talk about that $197 price tag – to earn $10,000 a month, you need to sell just 50 of those a month. Or you can sell 20 of the $500 coaching.

The point is, if all you’re doing is selling nickel and dime stuff, then you can’t complain if you’re not making any REAL money.

It’s time to step up your game. Whatever is holding you back from selling more profitable products, knock it off.

Don’t tell me your list won’t buy expensive products because I know they will. They’re already buying more expensive products from other marketers, so why not from you, too? Build trust and rapport with them and some of them will buy anything you offer.

But the first step is getting your own mindset in shape and believing that you can sell big ticket items.

And if this is too much of a stretch for you right now (you’re not alone) then you can at least get on the right track by adding multiple products to your line. Add a continuity membership site, paid newsletter and/or paid podcast. Add products that sell for $47, $67, $97 and more. Find affiliate products you love and believe in that earn good money per sale. This way you can work your way up to the big-ticket items.

Heck, I know one marketer who won’t sell anything that costs less than $1,997. He doesn’t have a list of 500,000 because he doesn’t need one. He’s got a couple of lists of about 5,000 each and he is absolutely CRUSHING it because every single sale brings big money to his own pocket.

His mindset is that $17 products are a total waste of his time, and he’s right. To earn $1,997 he can make one sale or he can make 117 sales. He chooses to make one sale and even as I write this I realize that I, too, need to focus more on the higher priced products. I guess there is a lesson in here for all of us. 😉